Joseph Smith should have had many kids from his plural wives, but had none to my knowledge.

And he seemed to love to surround himself with male "counselors"

I think the guy liked men. What else can be concluded?

I think Brigham young held all male dances.

With MMM lamanite makeup may have resembled the Village People.

I think polygamy would have looked very different if he were into guys. He was running his own cult and had the authority of "God" behind him, if he wanted to be with men, he would have been with men.

I'm pretty sure he was all women, all the time, with as many women as he could convince to be one of his brides.

You can thank his "doctor" for the lack of kids. He didn't want Emma getting too upset.

What else?

How about apply Occam's razor.

Which is more likely, he was a serial philanderer who didn't want to get pregnant and he wore a condom when he didn't want a woman to get pregnant? Or he was a gay man who only pretended to be a serial philanderer who liked to have sex with and marry lot's of women?

Pre-1855, condoms were homemade and a huge hassle. His own personal abortion clinic was easier.

This issue always baffles me. It's as if everyone expects Joseph Smith to have impregnated everyone women he had intercourse with in the day.

I've been banging my wife for 30 years. We have exactly the number of kids we wanted to have when we were married–four. (Boy and a girl or as many as it took to have at least one of each. That was four.)

Having sex three to four times a week for 30 years has produced exactly four pregnancies and no unwanted pregnancies WITHOUT BIRTH CONTROL.

ADULT CONTENT BELOW

How do we magically prevent pregnancies without using birth control? Just to spell it out, because that's what some TBM need I suppose, when my wife is ovulating I ejaculate somewhere else.

Simple.

If Joseph was even half a prophet, he would have figured that out too.

PS - No I don't think he was gay.

The pullout method is notoriously ineffective. Glad it worked for you. But even if you pull out before coming, you have inevitably left some residue inside your wife. Just sayin

Annoying Utah Accent Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The pullout method is notoriously ineffective.

Um...maybe it was never "in".

"in." (Punctuation goes inside the quotation marks.)

Yep it's in all the way...

Just sayin

Not necessarily. In the US it is correct to put punctuation inside the quotation marks, but in English speaking countries under British influence, the correct place is outside the quotation marks. It all depends on your location.

This is true ;-)

When Mormons pull out that weak azz argument that Joseph did not have any children with them...

Ask them

How many children did Casanova have with his lovers?

Then wait for the silence

Reminds me of the old saying:
Q: what do you call couples that practice 'the rythm method'?
A: parents

My OB told me this joke, while she was caring for me during my sixth pregnancy.

Of course he wasn't gay, he was a womanizing sex maniac, and Dr. John Bennett ( I think that was his name) was on the spot for any possibly needed abortion, and it is a known fact that he did at least a few.

Also, he left his all of his polyandrous wives living at home with their original husbands, and could easily thereby hide any pregnancies as their husbands own.

No DNA testing back then, so who could possibly know whose kids they were? He left them living at home with their husbands because he was trying desperately to keep his little secret of "polygamy and polyandry" from the main body of the church, who were beginning to get suspicious. No, there is NO way he was gay.

Well, regardless of the effectiveness of the method, Joseph Smith rewrote the bible to change the verse where Onan was struck down for using it. Instead, Joseph has God smite Onan for refusing to sleep with his brother's widow when ordered.

JST Genesis 38:8-10
8 And Judah said unto Onan, Go and marry thy brother's wife, and raise up seed unto thy brother.

9 And Onan knew that the seed should not be his; and it came to pass, when he married his brother's wife, that he would not lie with her, lest he should raise up seed unto his brother.

10 And the thing which he did displeased the Lord; wherefore he slew him also.

I suspect Joseph used withdrawal, backed up by abortion as needed.

Condoms have been around for thousands of years. No, they were not mass produced and made of plastic, but they were readily available for millenia before Smith used them.

Abortions are not easier than sticking something over your willy.

Condoms of that era were less effective, and I would not be surprised if there were some abortions, but saying an abortion is easier than wearing a condom is pure nonsense.

In the time period in which Joseph Smith lived, close same sex friendships were prized to the point of being romanticized, sometimes as much or more than romantic relationships between opposite sex couples. Some of these relationships were sexual, and some were not. I think in that time period it was not looked down on if they were, depending on how discreet they were. John C. Bennett was a close friend of Joseph Smith. It is suggested he performed abortions for Joseph's "wives". It is also known that Bennett had male lovers. Could one of them have been Joseph Smith? I think it's entirely likely, based on this quote from Joseph Smith: “It is pleasing for friends to lie down together locked in the arms of love, to sleep, and [awake] locked in each others’ embrace [to] renew their conversation.” I think it's clearly established that Joseph Smith enjoyed as many women as he could get. I also think he enjoyed being the center of attention and enjoyed the influence he had over people. So I think he likely was Bennett's lover, Brigham Young's lover, and probably enjoyed other men's company as well. I think he was bi.

Any sources on Bennett performing abortions? Thanks!

Maybe he was, or not, but there is a tendency to label those we don't like with the often erroneous assumption that they are gay. ie. Was Hitler gay? (I know, Godwin's law). I never really noticed it until Sonoma got peaved once about calling Boyd K Packer gay. I have done it myself. Yes there are pictures of him in a grass skirt in college, and yes he used a lot of hairspray in the 70s, and of course he has gay hang-ups. But seriously, I haven't seen any credible evidence that he or Spencer W Kimball or Joseph Smith were gay.

Sarah Pratt is the source for the claim that Bennett performed abortions for Smith.

What was a home made condom made out of? Wrap dirt and grass all over your pecker?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/17/2014 07:31PM by dirtbikr.

Maybe he wasn't particularly virile.

Maybe his little swimmers had poor mobility, low volume, low count, morphology issues, viscosity issues or whatever. I don't think we can rule out semen analysis abnormalities.

Maybe he made a point to have sex at times when women are less fertile in their cycle or already pregnant and lucked out.

Maybe the women lied about who the father was.


Who knows.

(assuming all of their children were his) at least nine times in 23 years.

What does it matter? He's gone and the damage is done. He has left his legacy and it has ruined the eternal lives of countless people. Whatever his sexuality was is a moot point now.

Well, I think his sexuality DOES matter. To be sure, there's no way I think that womanizer was gay...none of the evidence supports it. But his sexual proclivities matter, especially given the millions of lives he's ruined over the course of more than a century and a half. Much of what makes us tick as human beings is in our sexuality. Understand what made Joe tick and I think you have a powerful insight into Mormonism, its doctrines, and its allure. No, it's not the magic key to figuring out what makes Mormons tick, but I find that it's useful, nonetheless.

I have heard that there are two confirmed children by Joseph Smith of these women.

This is a quote from a FAIR article:

"In 1915, Josephine, the child, related that back in 1882, just months before her mother died, she told Josephine in a very dramatic fashion, that she had “been sealed to the prophet at the time that her husband, Mr. Lyon was out of fellowship with the Church”, and that Josephine was actually Joseph Smith’s daughter. Josephine married a guy named Fisher and there’s a whole Fisher family in Bountiful that descend from this. And I have been in contact with some of the descendants, and they are starting to say maybe we need to make a claim that we’re actually coming from Joseph and not from Windsor Lyon. From my research there are only 2 children from the plural wives. This is one. The other is Olive Frost’s daughter, or son, we don’t even know the gender, as both Olive Frost and the child died before they left Nauvoo. And that’s all. There are references to a third, but we don’t know. Maybe some new evidence will come up and we will find out."

Source: http://www.fairmormon.org/perspectives/fair-conferences/2012-fair-conference/2012-joseph-smiths-sexual-polyandry-and-the-emperors-new-clothes-on-closer-inspection-what-do-we-find

This fellow is arguing that in a weird sort of way Joseph's many liaisons were legit, and no true polyandry occurred.

Many mormons look like joseph smith even my own family. Many of the mothers probably lied about the father.

Could he have been bisexual? No offense to bisexuals

Perhaps he took after Joe Smith?

A little O/T- People who get pregnant (while trying to prevent) via charting/natural family planning are either extreme outliers or not really doing it correctly. Pregnancy only occurs when sperm meets egg and then implants. The egg is only released once a cycle, which can be predicted and confirmed via charting/temping. If you are not temping, you have no way to confirm ovulation and therefore no way to know when not to have sex. /endrant

Okay. Well, all I know, from personal experience, is this: The pull-and-pray method WILL bite you, eventually. Sure do love my youngest son, though. Best "accident" that ever happened to us.

Oh yeah, "pull-and-pray" is almost guaranteed to bite you in the ass. Actual natural family planning, not as much.

Also, I'm not bashing anyone who has gotten pregnant while using this method. As a student Nurse-Midwife, I've just discovered that there is a huge difference between NFP and what people actually practice. It's mostly because our sex ed sucks but that's a rant for another day.

I've mentioned this in this forum before. As an out gay man, I reread the documented church history and found a letter from a man in Pennsylvania to Joseph Smith. It seems that Joseph had sent Orrin Porter Rockwell to stay with this man to keep him out of trouble. The letter speaks of keeping Orrin confined and disciplined, which the author indicates that Orrin took in good stead. To my mind it spoke to a consensual Bondage / Discipline relationship. The attachment of Orrin to Joseph that begin as boys seems to me to be much stronger than buddies. However, it is obvious to me that they were both bisexual as they both had heterosexual relations. The John C. Bennet arguement is even more telling. He arrives is Nauvoo and within days he becomes Joseph's partner and equal in the church presidency and leadership in the legion. When one reads Joseph's description Bennet it is obvious to me at least that Joseph had the hots for him.

I see JS as an oversexed pansexual who had no moral secuples at all. I would suggest that men, women, boy, girls, goats and sheep were all at risk when he got horney.